During the Cold War, the Acoustic Kitty went under the surgeon’s knife to accommodate transmitting and control devices so it could listen to secret conversations in Moscow. The first cat mission was eavesdropping on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C.. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately.

About 50 tracking collars were fitted to house cats in the UK, incorporating the GPS receiver, accelerometers, gyroscopes, CPU, and much of the associated software. The college had already developed software functionality for larger animals and was retained, in particular the ability to change the collar’s operation and power consumption based on the cat’s behaviour, to conserve battery life.

Some of the domestic cat collars also carried a miniature high-definition video camera, which provided excellent video quality but only very limited recording time due to their limited battery life. The collars were programmed to only turn the camera on when the accelerometers indicated that the cat was active and the GPS receiver indicated that the cat was outdoors.